Taipei has to be Romanized as Taibei. But it may survive as Taipei, because President Ma Ying-jeou didn't want to change it to Taibei when he defied the government order to standardize the Mandarin Romanization with Tongyong pinyin (Comprehensive Romanization) in 2002 while he was mayor of Taipei. Kaohsiung, the familiar name Romanized according to the Wade-Giles system, has to give way to Gaoxiong. Hsinzhu will become Xinzhu, while Chingshui, the name which means Clear Water and was given by the Japanese to supersede Niumatou (Ox-Horse Head), has to be called Qinshui.

I am against the switch in the unified Romanization policy for the sole reason that it is unwanted. Oops, there is another reason: It's simply a waste of taxpayers' money.

The rationale the education ministry -- doesn't it have its hands full coping with all the troubles ranging from an uncontrollable proliferation of universities to high school and college entrance examinations, and does it have to stick its nose into the unwanted Romanization? -- offers is "to raise the country's national competitiveness, create a high-quality environment of international (or cosmopolitan or what?) living, and benefit international transmission of information." Of course, Hanyu pinyin helps information interchange, but perhaps in a very much limited way. The great majority of people all over the world will benefit little from the switch of the Romanization system in Taiwan.

To raise our national competitiveness? My foot, the newly ordered change doesn't in any way contribute to our national competitiveness. Nor can it create a high-quality environment of living for anybody in Taiwan, be he or she a native Han Chinese, a foreign resident or a traveler from afar.

The present chaos in Romanized names of places and people arose from the adoption of Tongyong pinyin. Perhaps it truly is a comprehensive Romanization system, for its author claims it can be used to Romanize Hoklo as well. But the motive behind the adoption of this system is political. The Hoklo-chauvinist government under President Chen Shui-bian wanted to get rid of Hanyu pinyin, which was developed in China. Chen could not tolerate it. Hence the semi-mandatory official use of Tongyong pinyin. It is in use in close to seven out of every ten cities and counties in Taiwan now.

Because the adoption isn't fully mandatory, some governments use Hanyu pinyin and even the Wade-Giles system. To tell the truth, I like the Wade-Giles system, not because Mr. Wade served one time as a vice consul in my hometown of Tamsui (sorry, Danshui) but I had learned it before Hanyu pinyin was created. Besides, the old system was used in all literature of Chinese history published in English before the 1960s. Ts'ao Ts'ao, not Cao Cao, is the bad guy during the Epoch of Three Kingdoms. It's Yuan (with a umlaut above the letter u) Shih-k'ai who tried and became an emperor (for a very brief time) after the Republic of China was founded on January 1, 1912. That's the trouble foreign residents or tourists may find in Taiwan. Long-time foreign residents have no hard time getting along around Taiwan, for they are by and large used to the Mandarin Romanization tower of Babel. Many of them -- Japanese and Koreans, for instance -- can read road signs and street names in Chinese. Tourists from abroad? Most of them don't care in whatever way those names are spelt. Japanese and Korean travelers read Chinese. Native English speakers can't read Hanyu pinyin or any pinyin unless they have learned it. How about Spaniards, Germans, Italians or Frenchmen? Gaoxiong can't be properly pronounced in Spanish because the letter x is usually pronounced "h" like in Don Quixote. German visitors will call Wenshan "Ven-schan," for their w is pronounced "v" and "sh" has to be spelt "sch." Cao Cao is Kao Kao for Italians, while "ce" in the Hanyu pinyin of the Wade-Giles "tse" which means "volume" will be recognized as ce in "ce's la vie" pronounced like "se" in English. Incidentally, the Germans prefer Tsingtao to Qingdao, which was the largest city in their sphere of influence in the present-day Chinese province of Shandong, formerly Shantung. Yes, foreign visitors have trouble reading our place names spelt according to whatever Romanization system. Pardon me, I've forgotten a very few visitors from Greece, Russia and former Soviet republics, and Arab countries. They are more comfortable if their own alphabets are used in spelling the place names in Taiwan.

It's clear that the Romanization of Mandarin under whatever system does not contribute to what all politicians in Taiwan call internationalization of their universities, cities or country. I am positive that they do not quite understand what their mantra of internationalization means. Most probably, they are convinced that universities, cities and -- let's not forget -- our dear country are all internationalized if everybody here speaks, or just understands a bit of English which is a functionally a universal language. If this standard is applied, the Philippines certainly is an internationalized country. Even Bangladesh may qualify as one. Such an internationalization doesn't add anything to Taiwan's national competitiveness, which is sliding down on the league table.

Why not let our Mandarin Romanization take its own natural course? The current chaos isn't intolerable. It causes a few people some inconvenience, but they do not really mind. There's no need whatsoever for spending a lot of money to forcefully "unify" all the different Romanization systems. Premier Liu Chao-shiuan's Cabinet is more than busy enough to cope with the milk powder scandal and the stock market crash. I am sure he doesn't want to change "shiuan" to "xuan."